All Forum Posts by: Valerie Hiscoe

The 'Facts by Email' which addresses all manner of things to do with real estate in North America is available at FactsByEmail.com and it's just as straightforward as the website's name.

Hi Stanley

Welcome to BP.  It's nice to see a fellow Vancouverite on the site.  Have you checked out any of the local real estate clubs?  REIN (real estate investment network) or the 'Real Estate Action' club?  A huge amount of training is included with membership in the later, which is of huge benefit. Fun meetings too.  There's also something called 'Facts by email' that you can sign up to get weekly and if investing in the Vancouver market is a little too rich for you, that will introduce you to the pros and cons of a lot of other markets.

Glad you found your way to Bigger Pockets to start you off right.  Good luck!

Consistently being voted as one of the best cities in the world to live in certainly has its drawbacks but, frankly, with all the rain we've had this winter, I can't figure out why it's so popular.  Maybe it's like labour - after such a beautiful day as we had today, it is pretty easy to forget all the bad stuff.

If the weather was warm and dry during the few days you were gone, maybe they thought they were rescuing them rather than stealing them.  It doesn't sound like your usual thief.

But your title gave me a chuckle.

If you're going to hook up the electricity at some point in the future, why would you not do it now?

Buyers need to see the HVAC and ESPECIALLY the appliances or don't even waste your time finishing. You have no choice.  Sleep there if you have to.

I'm so sad for you that you had these things stolen.  Good luck with the rest of the journey. 

Buying a property at below market value is always the goal and helping someone who is struggling with an impossible situation is usually the place that you look for those deals. Your emphasis should probably not go towards "splitting the profits" (which, as mentioned above, why would they need you if that was the case), your strategy might be better directed at saving them from the pressure of their present situation without taking over their troubles. Preforeclosure, the bank has claim to the full amount owed on the property.  It's only afterwards that they're willing to negotiate that amount so it's definitely worth following the leads as long as you're very clear on your parameters.  Not a lot of properties will fit within them and I'm not really clear on how you'll find any with profits enough to share.

You can do things the slow way by muddling about or save yourself a lot of time, confusion, and dependable on other people by getting the book noted above as well as J Scott's related 'The book on flipping houses'.

And have you done www.biggerpockets.com/starthere

Welcome to BP!

I'm so sorry to hear of this mishap - I had a nice drill set disappear once and that was bad enough.  I'm so glad that the loss will be covered by insurance but, even so, it makes it no less of a shock to the system. And an extremely inconvenient one for both you and your contractor, I'm sure. Thank you for taking the time to remind us that we have to be vigilant and hopefully you've prevented some of us from having to make our own mistakes (although you, in fact, didn't make any).

Paying the deductible is a really nice gesture.  People remember things like that - not so much for the dollar value as the thought behind it. I think it'll be a good investment in the long term.

Hope your project doesn't lose any momentum because of it, and that your flip is a great success! 

I think it's possible to invest in a rental property successfully from a distance as long as you have a good property manager and it still makes economic sense after you pay them.  My experience tells me that a flip is much less likely to go well if attempted from a distance.  You might as well just hand money to people on the street.  Even if the property is around the corner from you, paying people to do everything is going to leave you a pretty small profit margin when you're inexperienced and just starting out.  I think that's one reason you'll get advice to team up with someone experienced - there's a lot to learn about the taking apart and putting back together.  How to find someone to team up with is the problem though.

What exactly is it about flipping that drew you to consider it?  It might look like a get rich quick scheme but, beware, it is not.  How much money are you willing and able to lose in order to learn 'the ropes'? I learned a lot and lost a bunch and the most fun I had was when I fired everybody and took over doing the work myself.  I hung around and bought lunch for the people who were doing the stuff I wasn't able to, but every time I left, I'd come back to find work had stopped because of a question or, worse yet, it was just done wrong.  I still don't know how I'm going to prevent half that stuff from happening but I'm going to enjoy practising as I continue to learn. I just like it.

There are a lot of different areas of real estate so feel out a bunch of them before you decide on just one. Play to your strengths, as they say.